In this season finale episode, which first aired on December 7, a local statue of the Virgin Mary bleeds from its ass. Townsfolk think it's a miracle. Emperor Palpatine Pope Benedict XVI visits to inspect the statue in person, determines that it is instead bleeding from its vagina, and declares: "A chick bleeding out her vagina is no miracle. Chicks bleed out their vaginas all the time."Okay, it's rude and grotesque. But that's South Park.

And here I just saw a report on some television show about how the South Park guys love what they're doing because nobody can mess with them.

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights predictably expressed outrage and called on Comedy Central to ban further showings of the episode. (The president of this alleged civil rights organization recently claimed, "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.")Nothing like pulling out a little anti-Semitism to support your case for religious oppression.

Xeni at BoingBoing got it from dazereader, whose site showcases porn and sex hook-up ads -- a detail that makes this story all the more unappealing. Maybe the South Park boys could do an episode featuring a gang war between pornographers and Catholics ... or between Christians and Jews. Call it "The South Park Pogrom Program Special."

Comedy Central has seven episodes of South Park scheduled tonight from 9:30 to 1:00 (EST). Ads have touted this block as a mini-marathon of the show's most recent seven new episodes, from "Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow" (season 9, episode 8) through "Bloody Mary" (season 9, episode 14). My local TV listings follow this plan. However, the schedule at comedycentral.com shows a 1998 episode airing at 9:30, followed by episodes 8 through 13 of season 9 â€” with no "Bloody Mary".We'll see, we'll see.

I hope and expect C&L or Comedy Central itself will have clips from The Colbert Report's premiere, but there's nothing like watching it in one go. None of the on-location spots or This Week in God bits prepared me for this nearly manic bout of barbed satirical broadcasting.

From the opening proclamation -- "Your voice shall be heard ... in my voice" -- to the spoof on attitudes against facts and news (head stuff) in favor of the "truthiness" of feelings, from the almost-interview with Stone Phillips to the gravitas-off with Stone Phillips, the show just did not stop.

After five minutes, I was asking myself, "Ohmygod, can he keep this up?!" --And he kept going all the way through the show. Four nights a week? I don't know how. I don't think I've seen so much energy expended in one show by one person.

And sharp, too. I laughed the whole time and had to share. If you missed it, see the rerun whenever it's on. Clips on the web won't do it justice. And by all means, tune in tomorrow. If he keeps this up, Jon Stewart is going to wind up being the opening act.

The Department of Homeland Security, trying to focus antiterrorism spending better nationwide, has identified a dozen possible strikes it views as most plausible or devastating, including detonation of a nuclear device in a major city, release of sarin nerve agent in office buildings and a truck bombing of a sports arena.

The document, known simply as the National Planning Scenarios, reads more like a doomsday plan, offering estimates of the probable deaths and economic damage caused by each type of attack.

They include blowing up a chlorine tank, killing 17,500 people and injuring more than 100,000; spreading pneumonic plague in the bathrooms of an airport, sports arena and train station, killing 2,500 and sickening 8,000 worldwide; and infecting cattle with foot-and-mouth disease at several sites, costing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Specific locations are not named because the events could unfold in many major metropolitan or rural areas, the document says.

Translation: Be afraid! This is not real, but it could be, so be afraid! There's more:

The agency's objective is not to scare the public, officials said, and they have no credible intelligence that such attacks are planned.

So what the fuck could they be intending by releasing this? Oh wait....

They didn't.

The department did not intend to release the document publicly, but a draft of it was inadvertently posted on a Hawaii state government Web site.

This would be funny, if it weren't also ... pretty scary. What's also scary is that the Department of Homeland Security, vested with full authority to protect our homeland, managed to publish a secret internal document on the internet.

Of course, scaring everyone is what they're good at.

They're good at lying, too. Regarding their putting out fake news to deceive the public, the Bush Administration folks are not ones to be caught with their pants down -- they've delegated that authority to Jeff Gannon. Thus, this:

White House press secretary Scott McClellan defended the video news releases on Monday as "an informational tool to provide factual information to the American people." Nice sentiment, but why, exactly, wouldn't the administration want to let the people in on one of the most salient facts: who, really, is doing the talking?

[Karen Ryan's] Medicare report, for example, was distributed in January 2004, not long before Mr. Bush hit the campaign trail and cited the drug benefit as one of his major accomplishments.

The script suggested that local anchors lead into the report with this line: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare." In the segment, Mr. Bush is shown signing the legislation as Ms. Ryan describes the new benefits and reports that "all people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending."

The segment made no mention of the many critics who decry the law as an expensive gift to the pharmaceutical industry. The G.A.O. found that the segment was "not strictly factual," that it contained "notable omissions" and that it amounted to "a favorable report" about a controversial program.

And that's not all. Perhaps you've already seen ads on your dish or cable feed for The Military Channel? Yes, Disovery has been busy finding ways to make money off the American public's love of our soldiers overseas -- as well as our strange love for weapons that would make Dirty Harry soil his shorts.

The Pentagon Channel, available only inside the Defense Department last year, is now being offered to every cable and satellite operator in the United States. Army public affairs specialists, equipped with portable satellite transmitters, are roaming war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, beaming news reports, raw video and interviews to TV stations in the United States. All a local news director has to do is log on to a military-financed Web site, www.dvidshub.net, browse a menu of segments and request a free satellite feed. Then there is the Army and Air Force Hometown News Service, a unit of 40 reporters and producers set up to send local stations news segments highlighting the accomplishments of military members.

Meanwhile, fresh off the lucrative passing of the Credit Card Bill, the Republican congress has moved on to other things, like ripping open the Arctic to drilling for what amounts to two days' worth of oil. If the past is any indication, odds are we'll be seeing a "news report" produced by the US Government crowing about how the endeavor that at once destroys a pristine wildlife refuge and provides fossil fuel to be burned into air pollution for all of us to breathe in fact makes the air cleaner and the Arctic Wildlife Refuge even more hospitable for wildlife.

Of course, since hiring reporters to shill for government policiy and producing propaganda to air on the nightly news doesn't seem to be enough, the White House has brought Karen Hughes back to add fresh spin to what the government is really up to.

So it seems that perhaps the Republicans are right: government is the enemy. More specifically, a Republican government is the enemy of the people. Maybe as a follow-up to the scolding he gave to the Crossfire monkeys, Jon Stewart can simply ask the Republicans to "stop hurting America."